does anyonw mix their own cattle feed?

[roujesky]

I have about 10 cows. I have been feeding them a creep feed which has a lot of salt to act as a limiter. I have the opportunity to buy cotton seed at less than half the price. I buy it by the ton. I would like to find a formula for adding salt and other trace minerals to the cotton seed to make my own feed. Does anyone mix their own feed, and where do you get the minerals?

thanks

[Pat]

I don't think for your herd size that mixing your own feed along with minerals is practical. When I look at the list of ingredients in a bag of pasture minerals (LOOOOOONG LIST) I am not interested in making my own.

Around here you can buy corn gluten but most folks use it in a blend with cotton seed hulls or soy hulls. Something about 50-50 gluten and soy makes a pretty good ration. Pure gluten gets you too close to sulfur toxicity.

I do blend granular salt with the granular minerals (as suggested on the side of the mineral bag) this is to regulate mineral consumption. The stock will consume as much of the mineral/salt mix as it takes to satisfy their salt needs. I regulate the salt ratio to get the mineral consumption in the ball park.

I have 34 head today but two are going to the sale barn Wed. If we don't continue to get a little rain along the way I may have to reduce herd size considerably.

The commercial mills will blend you whatever you want but economically deliverable quantities are too large for you. I go in with a friend who runs about 50 head and together we buy an 18 wheeler load (about 24 tons) of corn gluten-soy hull at a time. He has a storage tank that will hold most of it and I use my dump trailer to hold the rest of the load. HE supplies some of his family with feed too.

Otherwise it is 55 gal drums in the PU or on a trailer driven under the overhead bins at the feed store to get he gluten-soy or gluten-cotton seed mix but it is more expensive.

Pat

[egon]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
I have 34 head today

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Boys oh boys from the meager ranching start of a few years ago and if a fellow was thinking in terms of the Louis LaMour's ranches your neighbors must be checking your cinch rings for signs of heat! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Egon, right now I have 32 as I took 2 to auction today. No clue about prices. I watched animals come through the sale ring for a while and prices were all over the place from around $40 to $124 (per hundred weight.) I'm guessing $60 for the B_I_G cow and maybe $110 for the steer.

Pat

[egon]

That sales ring place may be a good place to get familiar with so a fellow can a real handle on what the buyers are looking at and if and what other influencing factors there are. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]



Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Bird]

Egon, I found going to the sale barn was almost as much entertainment as going to the Fair; maybe even better because you could sit down and watch the show. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] The one in West, TX (yep, that's the name of the town, not a region of the state) even had a very good restaurant so we could eat a good lunch before going into the stands to watch the show.

[Pat]

Bird, Ditto at SOLA in Ada. Not much of a restaurant but OK. One of the hard parts is making sense out of the auctioneer's patter.

If you haven't been to a sale ring in recent years... it has changed. It is virtually all "grey" few to no younger people. A few professional order buyers, maybe a private buyer looking for a bargain to add to his herd, and a few older spectators. I have never seen the viewing stands over 1/2 full.

A friend went with me and commented that in the 90's there used to be lots of younger folks and standing room only packed in crowds.

Pat

[roujesky]

Mixing may be too complicated a process.... What I am really after is putting salt in with the cotton seed to limit the consumption. I only go out to the land on weekends. I want to fill the feeders with enough feed for the week. I dont want them to eat the week's worth of feed on Sunday! [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Pat]

I'll have to defer to an expert. I don't know if the palatability of the feed will cause some (all?) of the stock to get too much salt while trying to get more feed.

I'd check with an extension agent.

I mix granulated salt with granulated minerals for the express reason of adjusting/controlling the average per head per day consumption. If you let them at the pure "uncut" mineral they will go through it in a flash trying to satisfy their salt cravings and get too much of some ingredients. I'm just not sure if you can do the same with salt on feed.

Patrick